Washington (CNN) – After more than six decades of public service, Israeli President Shimon Peres paid his last official visit to the White House on Wednesday.

The Israeli leader discussed with President Barack Obama the wavering stability in the Middle East as civil uprisings in Iraq and Syria plague the region, as well as Iran's nuclear program – an issue Israel sees as a major threat to its security.

CNN's John King and other top political reporters empty out their notebooks each Sunday on "Inside Politics" to reveal five things that will be in the headlines in the days, weeks and months ahead.

Washington (CNN) – A déjà vu moment for the Obama White House and a number of interesting 2014 election dynamics closed our Sunday Inside Politics discussion. And don’t forget about Mitt Romney. Or was that DO forget about Mitt Romney?

Colleville-sur-Mer, France (CNN) – Defending President Barack Obama’s foreign policy as one of global leadership – rather than the passive stance his critics portray – National Security Adviser Susan Rice said Friday the United States was taking important steps in Syria by offering both "lethal and non-lethal" aid to the moderate opposition fighting a bloody civil war.

“The United States has been the single largest contributor of humanitarian assistance, providing over 1.7 billion dollars,” she said in an interview with CNN. “That's why the United States has ramped up its support for the moderate vetted opposition, providing lethal and nonlethal support where we can to support both the civilian opposition and the military opposition.”

(CNN) - President Barack Obama once again lamented the limits of his power on the world stage, expressing regret in a speech Wednesday night that he was unable to stop recent atrocities against children in Nigeria and Syria.

"I have this remarkable title right now - President of the United States - and yet every day when I wake up, and I think about young girls in Nigeria or children caught up in the conflict in Syria - when there are times in which I want to reach out and save those kids, having to think through what levers, what power do we have at any given moment" Obama said in a speech at the University of Southern California Shoah Foundation's gala in Los Angeles.

(CNN) - Sen. John McCain on Sunday slammed U.S. policy in Syria as an “abysmal failure and a disgraceful one.”

A second round of peace talks wrapped up in Geneva Saturday with little progress toward ending Syria's civil war, and nearly 5,000 people have died in there in the past three weeks, marking the most violent stretch in Syria's almost three-year conflict.

Washington (CNN) – Two and a half months after the U.S. backed off its threat to launch a bombing campaign against the Syrian regime, not everyone in Congress is happy with the easing of tensions.

In an interview that aired Sunday morning, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers told CNN's Candy Crowley that the the sweeping, Russian-brokered agreement prematurely closed the door to a more wide-ranging armistice between the regime and opposition forces. The agreement requires Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime to destroy its chemical weapons arsenal by mid-2014.